


The Constellations We Make

by subjunctive



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Abandoned Story, Alternate Canon, F/M, Loki Laufeyson P.I., Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subjunctive/pseuds/subjunctive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Abandoned</b>. When Jane discovers a problem at work, she turns to the only person she knows can help - even though she doesn't know whether she can trust him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story originated as a gift for the [MCU AU Fest](http://mcu-aufest.livejournal.com/), but soon spiraled out of control. It's been beta'd by the lovely aurilly, who is a treasure.
> 
> The title comes from Rebecca Solnit's _Storming the Gates of Paradise_ , where she says, "The stars we are given. The constellations we make." It seemed particularly apropos.
> 
> I can't promise fast or regular updates, as I always seem to be busy doing something, but rest assured I will see this story to its end eventually.

Loki slipped the file across the desk, flicking it open with a finger.

The gesture revealed a series of photographs. The client stared down at the first, her blue eyes wide, seemingly unable to look away. They were particularly raw in tone; he rather liked the angles on them, and the framing of the curtains as well. Grainy - rather tawdry - but the content was clear enough.

Each of the eight-by-ten photos showed her husband, a balding, middle-aged salesman with a ginger beard, engaging in some rather shocking sexual acts with his much younger secretary. Well, shocking for the client, no doubt; Loki himself was shocked by very little.

"His personal assistant, I believe," he murmured, quite unnecessarily. But he enjoyed the little frown his comment provoked. She thumbed through them one by one, touching only the very corners of each photograph as if they were diseased. But she looked through them all, eyes darting over each one, an impulse that Loki could appreciate. Better to pull, even yank, the bandage off, to know rather than be trapped in blissful ignorance. He only hoped she wouldn't begin crying.

He leaned forward, propping his elbows on the desk. It wouldn't do to appear bored, too unsympathetic. But alas, as soon as the client had finished turning over the last picture - they were scattered in an unruly fan, and he had to resist the urge to return them to their neat stack - she leaned against the arm of the chair for support, and he could see the red beginning to rim her eyes.

Internally he sighed. Externally he listened, or appeared to listen, attentively as she whispered, "I'd been hoping . . . I suppose it was foolish, Mr. Laufeyson, but I'd thought maybe that it was all in my head, and . . . that this would clear it away."

Loki tamped down on the irritation that surged up at her words. If she hadn't wished to know, she shouldn't have consulted him in the first place. He resisted the urge to inform her that knowledge was power, and more pragmatically that perhaps she'd be able to get something out of the divorce settlement this way. Instead, he closed the file and clasped his hands. He couldn't be too unpleasant, but if he was too pleasant he'd never get her to leave. And that was looking dangerously close to a real possibility: she was looking off into the distance, quite unaware of him, dazed.

"Aside from the final arrangements, I believe that concludes our business?"

The client startled, as if surfacing from underwater. "I - yes, of course." Flustered, she began digging through her purse for her checkbook.

They took care of her last payment in a welcome silence. As she gathered the photos and prepared herself to leave, he broke it only to add, “If you are going to show anyone else the photos, such as a lawyer, or your husband, I would suggest only the ones taken from outside the motel room. The . . .” He rifled through the set in his mind. “Third should provide sufficient evidence. If you used any of the others, problems would develop.”

The client stared at him, her wide, bright eyes an accusation (or so he imagined). “Then why did you take all the others?”

To be cruel, of course. That was the first reason that sprang to mind. Fortunately, Loki also had a more appropriate explanation. “I couldn't be sure they would do anything damning outside the motel room,” he said calmly. “Fortunately they were careless.”

Her red mouth twisted at his use of the word “fortunately,” but she didn't say anything, instead standing and waiting expectantly.

He saw her to the door, the very picture of gentlemanly politeness, murmuring meaningless words of parting all the while. When he finally closed the door after her, it was a real struggle not to roll his eyes.

Returning to his desk, he glanced outside; it was still cloudy, late afternoon, and he was sure it wouldn't clear up before the day was over. It was not the first time he had rued setting up his practice in Seattle – the wettest, darkest locale he'd ever had the misfortune of living in.

Loki had settled here several years ago following a falling-out with his not-family, but he hadn't ever gone to the trouble of making himself a _home_ here. The apartment he occupied was nearly as bare as the day he had moved in, a few pieces of necessary furniture notwithstanding, and the same was true of his office space. Any questions he received from clients about the subject were deflected with a smile and _″I spend most of my working time elsewhere, of course.″_

Not that there was anywhere in particular to be today. He'd just wrapped up the last of his cheating cases for the foreseeable future – they were dreadfully dull, and he'd promised himself a break – and business was slow on other fronts, as it always was. People thought the life of a private investigator was glamorous and dangerous, preferably both together, and it was this allure that had drawn him to the profession some years before; but in the end he made his living off adultery. It might have funded some of his less _conventional_ pursuits, but that was the particular lens he experienced Seattle through, and it had not endeared the city to him.

The one indulgent furnishing he'd allowed himself was the desk, which was very fine indeed, and the bottle of even finer whiskey stowed in the bottom drawer. The best in the realm, although it could not compare to the mead he'd grown up drinking. Nevertheless, Loki drew it out, along with a glass, and poured himself a generous quantity.

″To vacation,″ he said, toasting no one in particular. But before he could take a sip, there was a light knock on the door.

At first he thought he'd imagined it; he knew there were no appointments scheduled for the rest of the afternoon, and clients hardly showed up without notification beforehand. But then the knock sounded again, louder and more insistent.

Another worried wife, perhaps? Or maybe it was a husband this time: it was always good to have variety in one's life, he thought dryly. Nevertheless, his answer would be the same in either situation.

Regretfully he set down the whiskey and made his way to the door. Through the peephole he could only see a mass of long brown hair and short stature. A wife, then. He sighed.

But when he opened the door, Loki was faced with quite possibly the last person he'd expected to see. Ever.

″Hi, Loki.″ His erstwhile almost-sister-in-law was looking up at him with all the determination and straightforwardness he vaguely remembered, and probably more. For a moment he was struck dumb with shock.

When he did speak, however, he did not let his surprise touch his voice. ″Jane Foster,″ he greeted, one hand still resting on the door as if to close it at any minute. He had not forgotten that he was beginning a vacation of sorts.

Jane raised her eyebrows and tilted her head toward the office. ″Can I come in?″

″Of course.″ He stood aside and swept his arm out, his gaze following her entry. Perhaps the afternoon would be more interesting than he'd assumed.

Circling around to his desk, he sat down just in time to catch the face she made at noticing his drink. If it were anyone else, he'd have stowed it away immediately and possibly apologized if the potential paycheck was substantial enough, but for some reason he wanted to leave it out. He _had_ enjoyed needling her during their brief acquaintance, he recalled.

He expected her to set her bag – one of those crosses between a messenger bag and a briefcase, apparently in lieu of a purse – on the floor, but it remained in her lap. Leaning forward in her chair, she looked both nervous and eager.

″What can I do for you, Miss Foster?″

″Dr. Foster,″ she corrected, not offended but with the swiftness and finality of someone who had had to correct many a student in the past.

″Dr. Foster,″ he said agreeably. ″Are you here to ask me to check up on whether my – whether Thor has been having an affair?″

He hadn't made that mistake in years, he thought with irritation, but it was of course the way he'd spoken to Jane in the past. Old habits.

She'd noticed his misstep and frowned, looking taken aback. ″No, that's not why I'm here. Thor and I aren't together anyway, we haven't been for a long time. . . .″ She trailed off, presumably out of politeness to him. It irritated him.

″Forgive me.″ Loki wasn't the least bit sorry and had known, of course, unable to resist the temptation of his current resources to make the occasional check-up on persons formerly known. All in the spirit of having all the information; one never knew when it might come in handy. ″Some other man, then?″

″It's not like that at all. It's - it's about my job.″ Jane looked as if she wanted to say more, but perhaps didn't know how to say it.

There was a long silence, which he did not interrupt, then finally she sighed, slumping back in the chair. ″You're going to think I'm crazy.″

Words that almost certainly preceded an afternoon that was more interesting than he'd planned, even if they turned out to be true. ″Your work, you said?″

Still clutching her bag to her chest, as though it might run away, she nodded and bit her lip. ″I work for a company called Advanced Idea Mechanics.″

″You left academia.″ He couldn't quite mask his surprise at that. At the time she had struck him as an incurable idealist, with not a single bone of company woman in her body. He considered that he might be misremembering, but discarded the idea.

Jane sighed a sigh full of regrets. ″Normally companies are harder to work for in my field. Astrophysics,″ she clarified. ″Corporations, they want immediate results, something quantifiable, a clear project timeline.″

″Of course.″

″But A.I.M. - they were different from other companies. Free rein, they said. Whatever I was interested in. Access to resources I'd otherwise never even dream of otherwise. Other people could work the applications; I'd just have to do the research. With a whole _team._ ″

″And a substantial salary, naturally.″

She gave a half-shrug, unashamed. ″I've got some student loans, yeah. Or, well, I _had_ them.″

″Mmmm. And? What happened?″

She looked suddenly tentative, as if running up against some barrier he couldn't discern. ″Look, before I say anything else, I have to know … Are you sure your office is a safe place to talk?″

Loki started, drawing himself up; this _was_ more interesting than he'd anticipated. ″Are you asking if my office is bugged?″ he demanded, both offended and intrigued.

″When I started to work there, I signed...″ She squirmed, as if unable to say more, and glanced around his office meaningfully.

Her problem occurred to him suddenly. ″Ah. A non-disclosure of some sort. Well, if it sets your mind at ease, rest assured that I sweep the office regularly and thoroughly.″ He had had one competitor for his services try to run him out of town; it wouldn't happen again.

Jane relaxed minutely, her shoulders falling. ″I don't think it's the company itself,″ she confided. ″It's pretty much been a dream, working for them. But one of the employees . . . The project we're working on, it might have military applications.″ She pursed her lips and looked hard at a spot over his shoulder.

″You're worried about one of your co-workers,″ Loki prompted after a few moments.

Still she hesitated. ″I think he might be weaponizing it himself, or selling the research to another country. Or company, maybe. I don't have any hard proof,″ she said in lieu of making a case to him. ″I don't even know how to go about getting some, actually. That's what I was hoping _you_ could help me with.″

Loki leaned against the arm of the chair and studied her for a moment, chin in hand. If it were true – which he didn't doubt, as her wide brown eyes seemed to lack any guile whatsoever – it would be a very different case from the sort he was accustomed to working on. A different set of tools and skills would be necessary.

And it would be a more dangerous case, too. That fact did not trouble him; in fact, in made something in him rather perk up.

″Why not go to your supervisors?″

″I think there might be someone else involved,″ Jane explained with a grimace. Her face was quite possibly the most open and readable he'd ever encountered. ″A partner, or even more than one. I didn't know who I could trust.″

″So you came to me?″ A hint of incredulity crept into his voice. If there was one thing he was not accustomed to, it was the reception of _trust._ Particularly from those who knew him – even if they only knew him a little.

Color pinked her cheeks as she met his gaze with a rather fetching mixture of embarrassment and defiance. ″There was no one else. I don't know how to get it done myself. And I knew you would know.″

″Assuming I accept,″ he added, with as much disinterest as he was capable of mustering once his curiosity had been piqued. Jane only nodded.

He regarded her for another moment. He did not like that she had come barging into his life – his new life – without regard for the social graces that would normally separate them permanently. But simultaneously, he found himself intrigued by her request – and perhaps not a little by her as well. She was not at all like he remembered, although admittedly his memories of that time were perhaps colored by . . . other things. This could be a chance to challenge himself; he had been itching for something new.

Loki had never been one to back down from a challenge, or a puzzle.

″Very well,″ he said finally, studying her. ″I accept.″

 

  
As she'd made the drive up to Seattle, Jane's heart had hammered in her chest for what felt like the whole trip. It had been a crazy idea, and it had led her to do other crazy things – like get back in touch with Loki, of all people. It had been years since she'd last seen him, since he and she and Thor had been thrown together by the strangest of circumstances, and they'd never gotten along.

But it was true what she'd said to him, that there was no one else she knew to turn to. And Loki was single-minded in his pursuit of something he wanted, Jane had remembered. And what he always wanted was information, she was sure of that, even though the desire for information had torn him apart despite her warnings.

And now she was facing him from across a desk in his office, banking on that same desire. Life was surreal sometimes, Jane supposed.

But that was the extent of her philosophizing; there was business to get down to. She rummaged through her bag.

″You said you had no hard evidence,″ Loki said. His tone reminded her of one of the professors she'd had during graduate school, the one on her committee who had proclaimed her Master's thesis _theoretically sound but basically a wild goose chase inspired by science fiction._ ″What aroused your suspicions, then?″

″That's what I'm _looking_ for,″ she muttered under her breath. She pulled out the folder with the notes she'd taken. ″A- _ha_.″

She put the folder on his desk. There were only a few pieces of paper in it. ″When I was at work last Saturday, I was borrowing another lab for equipment, and I used one of the computers there. Someone hadn't logged off, and they hadn't closed out of their email, either, and I totally meant to close it, but then I saw . . .″ She leafed through the pages until she found the one she wanted, tapping it with a fingernail.

″This?″ Loki held up the paper, looking bored. ″Diagrams and equations. I'm afraid you'll have to translate your . . . astrophysics.″ His distaste was clear.

She kept herself from rolling her eyes, but only just. ″There's stuff from _my_ research here. Stuff I've been working on and putting in my progress reports. Plus notes about . . . applying it practically.″

Loki continued studying the drawings and scribbles, not looking up. ″Wormholes. That's still your specialty?″ There was a strange note in his voice that Jane couldn't identify. His body was very still and tense, as though wound tight.

″Yeah. I've had some setbacks, but ever since . . .″ She hesitated. ″Well, I thought I could help.″

″You thought you could help,″ he repeated slowly, still unreadable. Was he angry? Confused? Touched? She couldn't tell. (Okay, that last one was pretty doubtful.) He didn't move, didn't even so much as twitch.

Jane decided it was probably best to move on from the field of landmines that was the past. ″Anyway, my goal has always been travel. Bringing together two specific points in space-time. But these notations--″ She pointed to a particular set of symbols, her voice rising in urgency. ″They're not designed with a goal in mind. Without a calculated exit point, the chances of emerging on the other side someplace habitable, I don't think I have to tell you--″

″Infinitesimal,″ he finished, his brow furrowed. He leaned forward, seemingly engrossed. ″Yes, I see. And these diagrams?″

She took a deep breath. ″I'm not an engineer, so I can't be _positive_ , but from looking at the designs my best guess is that someone's trying to build a machine that generates my wormholes. A bridge.″

One of Loki's fingers rubbed across his upper lip, a gesture that he seemed unaware of. ″A bridge to nowhere.″

Jane built up steam as she continued. ″And I was thinking, who'd want to do that? In theory, you could use it to extract zero point energy, but there's no conversion module in the designs, and there's no containment field for the exotic particles that would be produced in the conversion process, which is _obviously_ ridiculously dangerous--″

His upraised hand made her chattering fade. ″The fact that nothing is on the other side may be the point, rather than the complication, I should think.″ His tone took on an instructional note as he said, ″Forget scientific purposes. What could be the motivation for dropping something on the other side of the galaxy?″

Jane huffed. ″I was getting there. Maybe dropping something on the other side of the galaxy _is_ the point. 'Something' being, you know, an army or whatever.″

″Military applications,″ Loki said, echoing her earlier statement. One of his fingers traced the outlines of a drawing as his eyes flickered over it, as though memorizing it. ″Yes, I can only imagine how _useful_ something like this might be.″

The thoughtfulness of his tone unnerved her, and she was seized by the desire to snatch the folder away from him before he got any _ideas_. Although she'd factored in the possibility before she'd come and decided the risk was worth it, in that moment she wasn't so sure of her decision. Even so, though, it was probably too late to worry about.

″That's what I'm afraid of,″ she continued, drawing his attention back to herself.

He seemed to recognize her suspicions and hasten to move on. ″And you think this is a rogue employee, do you?″

She caught the slight emphasis on the word _rogue_. That was the other thing that Jane had hesitations about. ″I don't know,″ she confessed. ″I _think_ so. A.I.M. is practically humanitarian: all their work that I know of is in clean energy, medical advances, stuff like that. I've _never_ heard of any military projects or weapons development, not in any department. It's hard to believe they'd be mixed up in something like this. And,″ she added at his skeptical look, ″I've always been kept abreast of any applications of my work, even consulted, and no one said anything about this.″

″It would be very stupid of someone to use their computer at work to do something like this,″ countered Loki. ″What if they were discovered? Who would take that risk?″

″I don't know,″ Jane said, throwing her hands up in the air, forgetting for a moment who she was talking to in her irritation. ″But we can't bring hardware in or out of the building, not even flash drives, and this stuff is too complicated to just _remember_ perfectly, so it's not like they could work from home, you see? Maybe it's an encrypted email account or they're a hacker or something, I don't know!″

″Well, _that's_ certainly obvious,″ he snapped. ″'Or something,' she says. You are just as naïve as I remember.″

Jane's bag fell to the floor as she leaned forward and half-rose from her chair. ″You know what, I must be if I'm asking for _your_ help!″

His mouth twisted; it was an ugly expression. ″Foolish of you, I agree. Why did you not consult your own government for help? Surely they would be interested in such wrongdoings, those attack dogs your people call--″

″Because I can't trust them either!″ She was on her feet now, yelling. ″They would just take it for themselves! I don't want _anyone_ to have it--″

His hand was gripping the chair so tightly it was white-knuckled, as if for support. ″And you thought you could trust me?″

She could hear scorn and bafflement warring in his voice, and it gave her pause. Loki, however, didn't seem to notice.

″How you could think,″ he continued, his voice trembling, ″that I would not simply take whatever information, whatever _designs_ and _weapons_ I uncovered, and sell them myself? I could use the resources, as you can see. I am sure you know the nicknames bestowed on me, the stories told by your--″

″Whatever--″ Jane interrupted, heedless of his rising anger and her own draining out of her. The firm, matter-of-fact tone she took was enough to stop him in his tracks. ″Whatever beef you had with Thor, I know you're not a bad person.″

His scoff was truly impressive. ″And whatever _you_ think you know of me, rest assured you are quite wrong.″

″If you really were that horrible, you wouldn't keep telling me about it.″

Jane thought her logic was pretty sound, but Loki merely barked out a laugh and shook his head. His grip had relaxed, though, and his shoulders slumped as he leaned back and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. ″You are a fool, Jane Foster.″

″Tell me something I wasn't told by the academic community for a decade,″ she said dryly. Deciding it was safe to sit down again, she perched on the edge of the chair and leaned forward over his desk. ″Are you going to help me or what?″

″I shall not ' _help_ ' you, despite whatever lingering goodness you believe me to possess," he said, dashing her hopes.

"What I will do . . .″ Here he paused. ″Is my job, which is rendering a service for payment. Assuming,″ his mouth quirked, ″you can afford my daily rate.″

Good grief. She relaxed. ″I think I have something you'll want more than money.″

″Oh, is that so?″ He obviously didn't believe her.

Jane was about to play her last trump card. She'd saved it through their whole encounter, originally intending to use it to motivate him to help her. She hadn't needed it then, but . . .

Jane folded her hands in her lap and stared him down. ″It is so, in fact. Apart from this whole--″ She flapped a hand. ″Situation, my research is going well. _Really_ well. And these designs, I have a pretty good idea how they can be modified to suit our needs. _Your_ needs, actually. If you help me, I'll put all my resources and energy into finding you a way back to Asgard.″


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FOUR MONTHS LATER . . . Sorry for the long delay. I got distracted by my Marvel Big Bang fic, and I had some plot stuff to figure out, but now I'm back and devoting all my remaining fannish attention to this for the rest of the year.
> 
> Again, many many thanks to aurilly, as well as Croik, who helped talk me through some of the plot stuff. This fic probably wouldn't be here without them.

_One brother she trusted immediately. He was sunny smiles and warm looks and open arms. (Very nice open arms.) And so willing to be helpful._

_The other, though. She didn't know what to make of him. Sly and secretive, narrow and pale: he turned Thor's attention from her when she wasn't looking, whispered in his ear things she couldn't hear but which halted the flow of information, made Thor a little more cautious and quiet--sometimes, at least. Jane didn't like anything, or anyone, that got in the way of her research._

_He was friendly and charming, but only when necessary, which made her immediately suspicious. It was a real question whether she could trust him._

* * *

″Okay, what do you need from me?″ Jane looked at him expectantly.

Loki pulled a legal pad and a pen out of a drawer and began making notes, pausing every now and then. The notes were mostly for clients' benefit; for some reason it seemed to soothe them. They wouldn't believe he was remembering what they were telling him otherwise. It had become his own habit, though, with the loss of other kinds of information retrieval available to him. ″You found this information on your co-worker's computer, yes?″ At her nod, he continued, ″And what kind of security do these computers have?″

″Well, I don't think it can be hacked. It's an intranet,″ she explained. ″A closed system--″

″I may have only been on this wretched planet for a few years, but I know what an intranet is,″ he snapped, and then took a deep breath. It wouldn't do to get worked up now, after he'd already agreed to take her case. He felt her eyes on him and kept his own gaze on the paper. _Security Measures,_ it read, underlined.

″Like I was saying, there's no wireless anywhere in the building. It's all hard-line, that's the rule. So nothing can get out. Or in.″

She continued to describe the each security measure A.I.M. employed that she knew of, including metal detectors and scanners for every time someone entered or left the building and the key-cards needed to access different wings and floors of the building. He spent several minutes jotting down concerns and crossing off options as they occurred to him. The more she spoke, the more irritated he became.

″That's just what I know about,″ she finished, finally.

″Oh, is that all?″ He spoke innocently, but the sarcasm must have been clear enough, for she glared at him.

He only smiled in return, incisively. ″I must say, Jane, I did not think you would stand for that level of supervision, or for so much bureaucratic watchfulness. Particularly since you declined the kind attentions of your S.H.I.E.L.D., if I recall correctly.″

″Like I said,″ Jane bit off every word, ″I was going to have to go somewhere, and A.I.M. looked pretty good in comparison. Besides,″ she added defensively, ″once you get in the gate, it's a good working atmosphere.″

″I'm sure.″ Loki discovered he was tapping his pen against the desk and stilled his hand. ″Whatever we do, this will involve some work on your part. You may be putting yourself in danger.″

″Why, I didn't know you cared.″

″I _care_ about what you're going to do for me after we're done with this.″

Despite his tone, she was undeterred. ″That's what I'm counting on.″

With a sinking feeling he didn't dare let show on his face, he looked over the list again. There was only one immediate route available to him that he could see. He knew a few hackers, some of the best, but they wouldn't be able to access the building's systems remotely without a way in. And the resources to accumulate any technology they might need to _get_ in – without money involved, he would have to owe someone a favor, and he didn't like being on that end of a deal.

Someone did owe _him_ a favor, though. Someone who would almost certainly be able to help.

Someone whom he did not like very much, and thought the feeling was mutual.

But it was a rather important favor, one Loki had liked having in his arsenal should an appropriately important need arise – and he wasn't sure this situation fit such a description. He would have to think about what was to be done.

That last thought was exactly what he told Jane, and watched as an incredulous look overtook her face. ″What am I supposed to do until then?″

″Go to work. Behave normally,″ Loki told her, enjoying her discomfort and outrage and not bothering to hide it. ″Like nothing is wrong. Nothing _is_ wrong, technically, as far as you know. I may know someone who can help, we'll see,″ he added magnanimously.

″I really wish you could still do magic or whatever,″ she muttered, fumbling around in her bag.

Loki pressed his lips together and didn't respond. A chilly silence descended over the office.

She seemed to catch that she'd said something inappropriate, for once, and offered an apology.

Rather than replying, Loki said, ″I'm surprised you admit the existence of magic at all. That was a sticking point for you before, as I remember.″

″Just technology we don't understand. Difference of degree,″ she said promptly, as though she were used to saying it, and held up her phone in triumph, her apparent goal met. ″The world's gotten even crazier since we met, I figured semantics wasn't going to be the hill _I_ died on after all these years of bucking the establishment.″

The corner of his mouth twitched, which he covered with a finger.

″Now how do I get in touch with you? When should we meet again?″

″I'll call you when I have something,″ he promised. ″Where are you staying? You don't live here, do you?″ The thought had just occurred to him, and it wasn't a pleasant one. That she had been here all this time, perhaps knowing he was here, with _him_ not knowing—

″I live in Portland now.″ A look of confusion crossed her face. ″That's where A.I.M. is, too. That's not a problem, is it? I have a hotel for the weekend here, though. I’m presenting at a conference.″

It was inconvenient, certainly, but not unworkable. He told her as much.

Jane gave him her number and was almost out the door when she turned back with hesitation, looking at him over her shoulder. ″Loki?″

She sounded afraid. She _looked_ afraid, all of a sudden, worry creasing her forehead and tightening the corners of her mouth. It was not a look he remembered ever having seen on her. She had never struck him as the type to be scared into inaction, instead jumping into the fray, consequences be damned. He frowned. She would be better served by her anger.

″Thanks,″ she said, breaking through his thoughts. ″For helping.″

He waved away her gratitude irritably. ″It's not _help_. It's an exchange. You're paying me, or do you not remember?″

She rolled her eyes and yet smiled.

When she was gone, Loki threw back the whiskey he'd poured for himself earlier in one swallow, relishing the burn at the back of his throat, and contemplated the nearly full bottle.

What the Hel. After that meeting, he deserved another.

Glass in hand, he rose to lean against the side of the window and look out. She was leaving, trusting him to stay, to help.

A sudden desire seized him. He could simply leave, he rationalized. He'd indulged his curiosity about her visit. It wasn't as though he were truly obligated to her, nor had he made a life here that he was overly attached to. It would be the easiest thing in the world to simply change his name, settle in another city – perhaps one with sunlight this time – and start over. Without his magic to cloak him, Heimdall would still know where he was, as he ever did, but without a present connection to Thor, Jane would likely never find him again. Would never drop into his office again to dredge up things that were better left buried.

He was sorely tempted.

He did not need her form of payment, after all; she was clearly unaware of his current circumstances. Had Thor, in relish or even regret, said _nothing_ to her? But that was not really unexpected, Loki supposed, given the severance of their personal ties.

And yet. Jane had turned to _him_ for help. There was a certain satisfaction to be had in that. Perhaps in this weak, cursèd form he could still be useful. Still accomplish something. The long-forgotten desire to prove himself was roaring in his breast – or had it been merely suppressed? His fingers tightened around the glass.

He watched as, down below, Jane darted into the street despite the shrill warning of a car horn, her bag held over her head in a fruitless attempt to stave off the vagaries of this wretched climate. No regard for her own safety. Impetuous and rash. None of this was unfamiliar. Another sip. He felt as though something had been shaken loose in him, and he knew suddenly that he would not leave.

Outside, the rain thinned to a drizzle, then seemed to fade entirely. There was even a sliver of late afternoon sunlight breaking through the clouds. Loki drained his glass.

Before he exited, he called his contact, not seriously expecting to speak to the man before the day was over. He kept to his own schedule.

″Tell him this is Loki, and I'm calling in the favor he owes me.″

″Of course, sir.″ The attendant's voice was as dry as he remembered. ″I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment. Would you like to make an appointment to speak with him?”

"Yes.”

“May you be reached at this number, or at another?″

Loki gave him the number and arranged a time for the next day. He did not know what to expect of the coming days, which was something he had not been able to say for some time, and anticipation jittered under his all-too-human skin with something almost approaching pleasure.

  
  
  


The next morning, Jane gave her conference presentation, distracted all the while by her phone, which stubbornly refused to ring. There was some chatter after the panel had ended, and Jane had a few people touch her arm and greet her, as well as a few of the usual hangers-on curious about Thor, but she made excuses quickly and skirted the edge of the room in search of the exit.

If he wasn't there or didn't want to see her, she reasoned, she could just hang out on her own before heading back to the hotel. It wasn't like it was a long walk or anything, and Seattle was a big, walking-friendly city with plenty to see.

Besides, she needed to check up on her case, didn't she?

She knocked on his office door, standing off to the side and shifting from one foot to the other. When he opened the door, there was, for a moment, a look of genuine surprise on his face, his blue eyes widening fractionally – but it was quickly replaced with a frown. Like Thor, he was ridiculously tall, and Jane felt quite a bit smaller under his critical gaze.

She straightened her shoulders anyway. ″Have you had lunch?″ she asked, holding up the bag of food in lieu of a greeting.

His head tipped back. Jane got the feeling the gesture was designed to make her feel even shorter. It worked, which made her bristle. ″I said I would call,″ was all he said. She caught the disapproving note in his voice.

But she hadn't even gotten anywhere in her life by letting other people cow her. ″I'll take that as a no. Come on, I'm offering here.″

He blinked – and there was that surprise again, twice in one day, wow – and Jane took the opportunity to push the door open wider. As she'd expected, there was no one else in the office. ″May I come in?″ she asked pointedly.

″I suppose it depends.″

″On what?″ Her fingertips were starting to feel numb from the plastic, and she gave him an impatient look and jiggled the bag.

His grin was sudden and wolfish. ″On what you're offering. I'm given to understand that your people no longer make offerings to your gods. Truly, I'm touched by this display of devotion.″ Loki waved a hand at her, asking in what was clearly supposed to be an innocent voice, ″Which part of this is the offering?″

″Okay, first of all: Ew. Don't start with that god crap again. You're just an alien. A very powerful, long-lived alien that our ancestors didn't know what else to do with.″ For a moment it was like she'd been transported to four years ago. She was pretty sure they'd had this exact argument then, too. Multiple times. ″Second of all: it's a free lunch, don't ruin it by being picky. Or gross. Third of all: it's orange beef. Now let me in.″

He was eyeing the bag with more interest now. ″Fine,″ he said grudgingly, and waved her inside.

″I was hoping you still liked Chinese. You and -″ She pulled herself up short, finishing lamely, ″You really seemed to, anyway.″

He didn't respond. It looked like she would have to pull their combined conversational weight by herself. ″What are you working on?″ asked Jane, after she sat down and opened her own container of lo mein.

″Checking up, are you? I thought you might have motives aside from a _friendly_ wish to catch up. Lowering yourself to bribery?″

Jane didn't see the point in getting defensive, even if it was her instinctive reaction. That would only make him angry. ″Yes. But can't it be both?″

He raised and eyebrow and did something on the computer, pointedly not looking at her, she thought. ″Bribery _and_ ulterior motives? My, you're keeping busy.″

″Both bribery and catching up,″ she returned sharply.

He made a noncommittal noise. ″I did tell you I would keep you abreast of any developments. Do you not trust me?″

 _That_ was a trick question if she'd ever heard one. Jane decided to sidestep it, another trick she'd had demonstrated to her numerous times by the man in front of her. There was only so long a Norse not-god of mischief could live with you before you figured out some of his secrets, anyway. ″I can't get this stuff out of my head,″ she confessed, taking a big bite and only just covering her mouth as she spoke.

If he noticed the deflection, he seemed to let it slide. ″Anxious?″

She hesitated – with him, vulnerability was riskier – but nodded. ″I was presenting at the conference this morning and all I could think about was how everyone could see I was a lying traitor and voiding my terms of employment. I don't know how you do it. What do you do? When you're pulling off a scheme or whatever? Any advice?″

″That is a trade secret, I'm afraid,″ he said with a smile.

″Well, you could help me a _little_ ,″ she grumbled. ″I mean, you don't want me to get caught, right?″

He was still smiling, though regarding her more seriously and leaning over the desk. ″Perhaps that is my grand scheme after all.″ For a moment, Jane's heart leapt into her throat and she stared at him, until she remembered that if he did have some quote-unquote _grand scheme_ , he'd never reveal it to her like that, or would at least distract her with a feint. No, he seemed to be just . . . being friendly.

She laughed, and he looked gratified for a moment. She'd caught this side of him but rarely in Puente Antiguo: joking, easy, conspiratorial. But that was not a thought she knew how to express without offending or angering him, so she kept this observation to herself and took another bite.

″Trust,″ he began after another moment had passed, ″that people are stupid.″

She rolled her eyes, the nice moment evaporating. ″Still on your humans-are-inferior kick, I see.″

He scowled. ″Your species is weak, both physically and mentally; your technology is laughable, millenia behind anything remotely useful.″

″Hey!″ Jane said through a mouthful of noodles. ″You said yourself we've had an, and I quote, _alarmingly rapid pace of advancement of late_ -″

He waved her off. ″But that is not what I meant. There is your answer. Trust that the people around you are stupid, that they will only see what they wish to see. It is nearly always the correct assumption.″

Jane stabbed her fork in his direction. ″Hey, now. Some humans are very intelligent. In fact, I work with a bunch of them.″

He was not looking at her as he said, ″Highly intelligent people often miss what is directly in front of them, what is plainly obvious in retrospect.″ She had the sudden feeling that he wasn't talking about his scheming and trickery, but she didn't know quite what he _was_ talking about. But before she could respond, the phone rang and startled them both. Recovering quickly, Loki glanced at the clock and answered the phone, seeming not to notice her at all. Jane couldn't hear what the person on the other end of the line was saying, so she dug into her food and tried to be unobtrusive.

″Are you not still asleep?″ Loki responded to the caller. ″I should have thought at this hour -″

She glanced at the clock surreptitiously, not wanting to let on that she was listening. It was only just after noon.

″I don't care if you don't like speaking to people you can't see -″ A pause, then an aggrieved sigh. ″Oh, fine.″ Something beeped on his computer, and he hung up the phone. Loki shot her a warning look and said, ″I suppose you can stay, because this has to do with you, but don't say anything.″

 _What_ had to do with her? But before she could figure out the answer to that question, a voice came over the computer's speakers.

″Loki. Loki, Loki, Loki. God of lies. How you doin', buddy?″

The voice sounded vaguely familiar, though Jane couldn't place it at all. She couldn't quite put a face to it, but had the impression of a TV – a newscaster, maybe?

One who apparently knew who Loki was?

Loki regarded his monitor impassively. ″Hello, Stark. Late as usual, I see.″

Jane nearly lunged forward over his desk. Stark as in Stark Industries? ″Tony Stark?″ she blurted out before thinking better of it. Well, that explained why she recognized his voice. No wonder she thought of the news. Not her usual hobby, listening to the news, but it had become a habit while she had been with Thor, keeping up with whether he had reappeared.

″Oh, do you have a lady friend with you? Please, don't mind me. _I_ don't mind. Me, that is. Keep doing what you were doing,″ the voice said airily. ″Also, I'm never late. Not to important things, anyway. It's not my fault you're not important. And I take it back. I don't believe you have a girlfriend. No one could put up with all that . . . brooding. No one sane, anyway. Although hey, maybe you've found someone as crazy as -″

″Stark,″ Loki interrupted. ″I believe I said something about a favor.″

″See, that's what I'm confused about. I don't know about that. I don't remember owing you a favor for anything.″

″I believe the precise words 'We owe you one' were spoken,″ Loki said. ″In that order, even. I've come to collect my boon.″

″Those exact words? I know better than to say that. My lawyers are strict about that kind of thing. Aren't you a trickster or something? I don't believe it. J.A.R.V.I.S., what do you think, do you believe it?″

A third voice, dimmer, said in the background, ″I'm afraid Loki is correct, sir, although in the interest of precision the entire sentence is, quote, I guess we owe you one or something, end quote.″ Jane stifled a smile, unable to tell whether the third voice was making fun of Stark or Loki, and leaned forward in captivation. ″If you would like to hear it, I have the recording dated September second, two thousand -″

″Shut up, J.A.R.V.I.S., you're not helping. Anyway, I don’t see why it's a _favor_ , exactly, when you were just helping clean up the mess you brought here in the first place. I don't know if _you_ remember, guy, but _someone_ almost got San Francisco frozen solid. Then _someone_ kinda helped figure out how to thaw it out. Not a favor in my book. Doesn't count. Check the dictionary if you don't believe me. You know, I'm a math person, diction isn't really my thing. Oops. Feel free to sue me, good luck with that.″

″I also procured a very powerful artifact for your people,″ snapped Loki.

″Hey, S.H.I.E.L.D. is not 'my people,' buddy -″

Jane was overcome by a powerful sense of deja vu. ″Shut up, both of you.″ Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried in the small office.

″Hey, you got your own Pepper,″ said Stark cheerfully, without missing a beat. ″Now I have to meet her.″

Considering that her invitation to satisfy her curiosity, and ignoring Loki's disgruntled look, Jane rounded the desk and leaned over his shoulder, pressing against him lightly.

″Hi,″ she said, raising a hand and feeling inane.

Stark was grinning, leaning back in his chair, apparently not having noticed the shiny black smudges on his cheek and forehead. Some kind of engine grease, maybe. It was a very different look from his public displays of partying and drinking in expensive suits. ″Crazy _and_ pretty. Loki hit the jackpot.″

Okay, it was a little more annoying when he aimed it at her. Even without looking, she could feel Loki's disdain radiating. ″We're not dating,″ she hastened to say. ″I'm Jane Foster, by the way.″

″Jane. Jane Foster. Why does that sound familiar? Foster. Jane Foster. Did we meet at a party? Did you interview me? Did I sleep with you? Did you sleep with someone I know?″

It sounded like he was going to be in that vein for awhile. ″You might have heard of me,″ she said coolly, ignoring his quick _well I wouldn't be sure about that_. ″The Foster Theory.″

Stark brightened up and snapped his fingers. ″Foster Theory Foster! That's it! And I was right, wasn't I, you were totally with Thor while he was around. Guess you keep it in the family, huh. Also, the 'we're not dating' thing? Was that an invitation? That's too bad, 'cause I'm totally in a healthy, stable-ish, adult relationship – but don't tell her I said too bad,″ he added quickly, ″just forget I said that, I don't sleep with theoretical physicists anyway, it's a matter of principle.″

″I shall endeavor to forget,″ Loki interrupted – she was starting to think that interrupting was inevitable when talking to Stark - ″if we may return to our previous topic.″

″Our previous topic, meaning my poor word choice. I don't know why anyone would take anything I say seriously, given that I'm drunk half the time, what were you thinking?″

Loki's voice was rising in severity, if not volume. ″Nevertheless. I find myself . . . in a position to take advantage of your resources and skills. Such as they are.″

″Such as they are. Wow. Very smooth. You're really selling it here. You know, a lot of people want my help, you might have noticed, I'm a very busy man what with saving the world on numerous occasions -″

Jane decided it was in all of their best interests to cut in. ″This might fall into the world-saving category, Mr. Stark.″

On the corner of the screen, Stark cocked his head. ″And yet, I don't get the impression that you're going to ask me to beat somebody up. Which I would do, happily, assuming the circumstances justified it. . . .″ He looked curious.

″Not a . . . superhero problem.″ She would probably never get used to that word. ″More of a technology problem.″

Stark never seemed to stay still – one finger was tapping his chin, one of his legs jogging up and down. ″You want me for my brains. That's sexy,″ he said dryly. But Jane thought he looked a little flattered all the same. ″I have to say, it's been awhile since anyone's told me that. The troubles that come with having a handsome face, sparkling personality, great sense of humor, and beautiful body, I guess.″ He heaved a theatrical sigh. ″So what's the problem? Lay it on me.″

So Jane told him about her research, and A.I.M., which Stark had heard of, and the dangers of wormhole applications. While she was describing the military applications, Stark was nodding along, looking down. When she got to the co-worker, and the curious notes and designs she'd stumbled upon, Stark jumped up suddenly and walked away. Jane paused mid-sentence. ″Uh, Mr. Stark?″

″Beautiful women aren't allowed to call me 'Mr. Stark,'″ Stark said immediately, though his voice was dimmer. ″And I'm here. J.A.R.V.I.S., speakerphone.″ When he spoke again, his voice came through much more clearly. ″Keep going, I promise I'm listening.″

When she'd finished describing the security measures at A.I.M., Stark could be seen pacing back and forth in the background of the video feed, his hands occupied with something Jane couldn't see. ″So what you need – correct me if I'm wrong – is a way to hack the system from the inside so you can figure out more about their plans. Without anyone finding out.″

″Right.″

″Well, that's not too hard.″

Loki and Jane looked at each other. ″It's not?″ Jane said for them both.

″Nah. But … I have to ask, what are you planning to do with that information, exactly?″ Stark was suddenly looming over the webcam, looking suddenly very serious in the blue glow of his arc reactor.

Jane fumbled for words. ″What do you mean?″

″You know. Doing. Action. Verbs in general, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. Future tense.″ He seemed to catch himself and sighed, though Jane couldn't tell whether it was aimed at at her or himself. ″Okay, let's say you're right, and this guy -″

″Or the entire company,″ interjected Loki. Jane shot him an annoyed look.

″Right, or the whole company is bad from the top down, corruption running rampant, et cetera, well, what are you going to do then?″

″What am I going to do?″ Jane was flummoxed. ″I –″

The truth was, she had no idea. There were vague notions of exposing him – but to whom, without revealing her actions? ″If it were Evan by himself,″ she said, ″I would just tell the company, wouldn't I?″ But she could see immediately after she said it that that wasn't right. ″Well, they'll know what I did to get that information, or they'll figure it out. But that doesn't mean it's not worth it, right?″

″Very noble of you,″ Loki said.

Stark made a face in response. ″I can't believe I'm agreeing with this guy, but yeah. Still, it's your life, it's your job, make the sacrifice play if you want to. But what if the problem is bigger? Who are you going to call?″

It felt like a pop quiz, or even an interrogation. That kind of thing had been a lot easier to deal with in Quantum Mechanics 101; ethical dilemmas were another story.

″Well,″ she hedged, trying to think through the options out loud, ″there's the police . . .″ It felt wrong even as she was saying it, so she continued hurriedly, ″But they're probably going to call S.H.I.E.L.D., aren't they, or S.H.I.E.L.D. will get themselves involved some way or another, and then they'll have their hands on my research.″ She took a deep breath. ″And somehow I don't think they're going to destroy it.″

″They will not,″ Loki said from beside her, with assurance.

Jane turned to Loki. ″How do you know?″

Loki just shrugged one shoulder gracefully. ″I have my ways.″

″Cryptic. Thank you for that,″ Jane huffed, and turned back to Stark. ″Well?″ she demanded, almost belligerently. ″What do _you_ think we should do?″

″I didn't say I had an answer, sweetheart.″ But he looked thoughtful, turning over the device in his hands. ″I'm happy to help you with the tech stuff.″ He smoothed a hand over his chin, then did it again. Jane decided not to tell him that he was smudging the black stuff further. ″I can't say that I'm entirely comfortable with S.H.I.E.L.D. getting all that research either, myself. We're not exactly the best of buds, and I wouldn't trust those suits as far as I could throw them. What I would do . . .″ A smile spread over his face, then he laughed and shook his head. ″I should have an advice column. 'Ask Tony Stark,' that kind of thing. Who wouldn't want that? Wait, don't tell me. Anyway, here's what I would do.″

By the time Stark finished outlining his plan, the Chinese food was laying cold and forgotten on the desk, and Jane had pulled around her chair to Loki's side. Toward the end of the conversation, Jane was left feeling slightly stunned by all the information she now had to process. And then put into action.

″Okay, I'll be working on the program today, it should be finished tomorrow, I'll overnight the drive.″ 

Jane gave him her address, voicing the concerns that had been plaguing her throughout the conversation. ″How am I supposed to get it in, though? There are scanners and metal detectors.″

″Metal detectors only go off when a certain amount of metal passes through the detector all at once,″ said Stark. ″There's not a lot of actual metal in the flash drive, not enough to set it off. So all you have to do is make sure you wear something without much metal and then stick the flash drive somewhere they're not going to check. The scanner only sees a few millimeters below the surface of your clothing.″

For a moment, she didn't catch his drift, but his grin told her all she needed to know. ″Oh my God,″ she mumbled, looking down, ″you've got to be kidding me.″

″If you come up with another option, let me know,″ said Stark breezily, leaning back. ″Feel free to draw a diagram of what you come up with, by the way. Or maybe an in-person demo, I'm always down for one of those.″

After Stark had logged off, Jane turned to Loki, feeling suddenly weary and overwhelmed. There was a lot to remember, for her specifically. Jane reviewed all the different steps they would have to take – getting information, evaluating it, and finally possibly destroying it – and saw too many places where the whole thing might break down. Where she'd screw something up and get caught, lose her job, be made a laughingstock of – okay, that option wasn't exactly unfamiliar, although the idea of it rankled after a few years of success and validation – or just be wrong and humiliated. For Loki and Stark, the whole thing was practically an academic exercise – not that they weren't taking a risk themselves, but relatively speaking.

She wasn't an Avenger. This wasn't her job. For a moment she thought about just handing over the whole thing to S.H.I.E.L.D. They'd know what to do. They had spies and information analysts and dealt with weird stuff like this all the time. Right?

Jane rubbed her eyes.

″Regretting your decision to come to me?″ Loki said quietly, leaning against the opposite arm of the chair and watching her.

Another double-edged question. ″Everything could go wrong,″ said Jane instead of answering. ″How do you – how do you know that S.H.I.E.L.D. would make weapons out of my research? Really? Or was it just a guess?″

″I mentioned I procured an artifact for them.″ At first Jane was first confused by the non-sequitor, but then he continued. ″It is a very powerful and ancient object. Asgard calls it the Casket of Ancient Winters. I was asked, very politely and convincingly, to consult on how S.H.I.E.L.D. might best put it to use. You can imagine for yourself the kinds of uses they were most interested in.″

Jane's heart sank. It was exactly what she hadn't wanted to hear, and exactly what she thought she might when she asked. ″Nothing else to do, I guess.″

″Of course there is. You could always do nothing.″

″Don't you want to get paid? How is this good for business?″

This drew a smile from him in response. ″You might fret about the dangers awaiting you, but I know perfectly well what you're going to do.″

″Oh yeah? What's that?″

″Steel yourself and do the thing you think is right. You can't do anything else.″

He said that like it was a weakness, a failing. She wondered why he said it so bitterly. Something to do with Thor, maybe, she guessed. It always seemed to come back to Thor with him. Apparently, in the time they'd spent apart, _that_ had never been resolved. Cue her total lack of surprise.

″Well, I could use some steeling. Buy you a drink?″ _Nice segue, Jane._

He merely raised an eyebrow. ″Are we finally getting to the catching up part?″

″This is the I'm-about-to-spy-on-my-own-employer-and-I-need-a-few-drinks part." She stood up and held out a hand. ″Come on. Let's go.″


	3. Chapter 3

She leaned on his arm as they returned from the pub. She'd sampled – rather unwisely, he thought, though kept this to himself – four different tropical drinks. Each had been better than the last, or so she'd proclaimed.

Not that he hadn't partaken himself. If there was one thing he wasn't used to about his human form, that he would never get used to, it was the highly diminished alcohol tolerance. But he was still in better shape than Jane, who had wrapped both hands around her arm and was letting him lead her around most trustingly.

The very last of the sunlight was fading as they rounded the corner on the way back to her hotel. They'd spent a respectable few hours eating and drinking, the evening mostly composed of her asking prying questions about his past and family under the guise of ″catching up,″ his deflecting them, and her finally giving up. As a reward, he'd told her about some of the more . . . interesting cases he'd come across in his current line of work, ones he'd chosen specifically to delight or dismay her. Both became easier as further drinks were imbibed. Though the challenge had faded, his entertainment had not.

″Look,″ she said, and he did, down at her. ″You were totally dodging my questions earlier. I get it, personal business, whatever. And _sometimes_ I guess I can be too much.″ She let go with one hand to make a dismissive flapping motion. ″ _But_ even if you don't talk to me you should totally talk to _someone_. Everyone needs someone to talk to. A friend.″

″I don’t believe you."

″Believe me about what?″ Now she stopped in her tracks and looked up at him, her mouth parted slightly. Guileless. "Do you not have friends on Asgard?"

″That you don't care who I talk to. You would die of abject jealousy were I to reveal secrets about Asgard or the cosmos to someone else before you. It's just in your nature.″

″See, you're doing it again. I'm not talking about Asgard or the cosmos. And you know it.″

As they neared the hotel, and then entered the grand front entrance, she didn't stop, nor did she slow or look up at him questioningly, or do anything at all that would signal it was time for him to take his leave. Perhaps she was fool enough to believe she could still wrest some of his secrets from him. So he followed her all the way up to her room, swiping the key card out of her hand when she fumbled with it. As he opened she door, she sighed loudly, leaning her head against the doorframe. Loki let them both into the room – he would see her to the bed, he wasn't a complete brute – and watched from the meager entrance hall.

Seating herself on the bed, Jane began tugging her shoes off (a poor attempt at making up the difference of height between them anyway) and flung them across the room with the abandonment of the drunk. One bounced off the wall with a smack; the other landed in the armchair in the corner. "Two points!" said Jane, and fell back onto the bed with a slight bounce, exhaling loudly.

" _Lo-_ ki," she said faintly in a sing-song voice.

"Was there something you wanted, Jane?"

She propped herself up on her elbows and glared at him. "Yes. I want you to tell me a story."

That was . . . not what he had expected. "What kind of story?"

"I don't know. It's your story. You tell good stories." Her gaze slanted away from him, a faint pink tinging her cheeks.

"I gave you all my best stories already, I should think."

"Not stories about your _job_ ," she said. Then her focus seemed to slide away. "Have you really been doing that all this time?"

"Why? Do you find it distasteful?" he said silkily, with a little smile.

"No," she said immediately, ever the contrarian. Then she deflated. "Well, it kind of is. But that's not what I meant. It's _boring_. When I found out you were still here, you weren't what I expected. Or where I expected you to be. Like, at all."

"And what precisely were you expecting?" He took a few steps toward her, and though his hands were in his pockets he knew he made an imposing figure.

But she didn't seem cowed. "Something . . . I don't know. Flashier. More interesting. A spy! You'd make a great spy. Or you'd just steal a bunch of money and live on a tropical island or something. Or trick your way into becoming president, I don't know."

"You think so highly of my skills. Besides, if I had done any of those things, I wouldn't be able to work with you, and you wouldn't have sought me out."

"Yeah, I guess not."

He was close enough that he might as well seat himself on the edge of the bed next to her. "I'm _so_ sorry to disappoint you."

She merely threw one of the hotel's pens at him and scowled. "It's not _that._ It's just – has it really been so long? Four whole years? Haven't you found a way to –" She made a frustrated noise.

Loki kept his tone light. "I'm afraid not. The All-Father's ways are ever mysterious."

It wasn't the complete truth, though she had no way of knowing that herself. Not unless Thor had told her, and he rather thought that was not the case. Loki might have proven himself worthy temporarily, but then . . . the whole story was not something he found himself willing to repeat, much less in Jane's hearing.

"Though I suppose the All-Father has rather a different face now. Have you seen him since?"

"Thor?" She sounded confused. "Not in years . . . well, I mean, I've only seen him a couple of times since we . . ." She fingered the hem of her shirt.

That made him feel more sour than he'd imagined. "Ah. He would visit you. How blessed you must feel."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Nothing," he muttered. "I mean nothing, as ever, Jane."

Drink had always made Jane Foster over-earnest and affectionate; this occasion was, unfortunately, no exception. She sat up and slid her hand up his arm, squeezing lightly. "Loki?"

Loki pulled away from her grasp. "You said you wanted to hear a story?"

She was sufficiently distracted. "What kind of story?"

Loki summoned a smile. "A story about worlds beyond yours, Jane."

Loki told her of the frost giants, his voice sliding automatically into a bardic cadence: the Jotnar were the mythical, fantastical, menacing beasts that lived beyond the borders of Asgard. Giant and blue and brutal were they. Their powers of sorcery were born from the twisted, the dark, and the cold. Though they cared for their own, there was no warmth in them for any other living thing, nor for the wonders of the cosmos. If they had any desire at all, it was their hunger and thirst, and if they were intelligent, it was bent toward dark ends. The ugliness of their blue skin and deformed faces were outer representations of their inner reality. He told her of Ymir, the first of the giants, who was ever hungry, and his defeat at the hands of Odin, rendering Midgard safe. They were, and here Jane Foster didn't see the bitterness of the smile that touched his lips, the enemies of all life and joy and warmth everywhere.

After this grand conclusion, Loki looked at his hands where they were resting in his lap, folded together. They hadn't turned the light on when they came in, and while he was speaking the last of the daylight had faded. In the half-darkness, his hands looked almost blue, even though it had been more than four years since they'd been anything but Midgardian-pink. Quickly he slid them into his pockets and turned to look at Jane.

She was looking at him, still awake, with one of her hands tucked behind her head. "Tony Stark said you were at the Battle of San Francisco."

"Well, you should always trust what _Tony Stark_ says," Loki drawled. "Goodness, I can't imagine a more trustworthy source of information."

"Isn't that what he meant, though?" she persisted. Always she had a way of slicing through the fat to the meat of the matter. "He said it was your fault."

That was a decidedly narrow view of the situation, even if it was not entirely unwarranted.

"But that you made up for it," she added, prodding him with her toe. "Right? That's why you're not in S.H.I.E.L.D. lockup or whatever."

"I was involved in the debacle," he allowed. "Along with many others, your Thor included. I am aware of your propensity for burying yourself in your work, but surely you know what happened already."

Jane's nose wrinkled. "He's not _my_ Thor. He's more yours than mine at this point. At all points, honestly."

Loki didn't say anything to that.

"Besides," she added, "he didn't talk about it much. Just said he got his powers back, and how he was needed back in Asgard. I was stuck in New Mexico the whole time. All I saw was the news, and then what Thor told me."

"Then I doubt there is anything I could add to your knowledge."

"The frost giants that were there, in San Francisco – those were the same guys you were just talking about?" She covered an explosive yawn with her arm.

"The very same." He hesitated, but knew she was going to ask all the same. He did not turn to look at her. "They invaded your world as revenge for their defeat a millennium past."

"A thousand years is kind of a long time to wait," she said dubiously.

His hands flexed in their pockets, but he said only, "They have long memories, and they did not have the means of traveling between worlds before then. I suppose they thought Midgard would make an easier target than Asgard itself. Base cowardice, of course."

"Which part of that's your fault now?" Her voice was becoming blurrier.

The only people on Midgard who knew that information, besides Loki himself, were Stark, that blue-suited idiot, and the one with the eyepatch who had tried to recruit him. Loki had always been more given to secrecy than to sharing his thoughts, but even secret-keepers were ever waiting for the right moment to unload their burdens. In a sudden impulse he thought there was a good chance she was not going to remember this conversation later regardless. "It was I who provided them with that means of travel. The casket I mentioned earlier, if you recall."

"But then you stole it back. That's what you said. Now S.H.I.E.L.D. has it."

He inclined his head.

"Magical artifacts. Frost giants. Sounds like Erik's myths," she said, covering a yawn. She sounded more serious and sober than he had been expecting.

"They are quite right on the subject of frost giants, at least. They are monsters."

Jane made a disagreeable noise. "I don't know. If there's anything the past few years have taught me . . . you can't always believe the stories. They were wrong about you, after all."

"Were they?"

"Well, _sort_ of wrong, anyway. I mean, it's been awhile since I've read them, but . . ."

"Ever the optimist." A foolish quality, bound for danger and disappointment, but on occasion strangely endearing. She had been optimistic about the possibility of housing two alien men that had been banished from their native realm and dropped into her patch of desert, about learning about the universe from them and translating their knowledge into the language of Midgardian science, and about her ability to keep nosy bureaucratic busybodies out of her research. Risky business, he could have told her, all three. Of course, he had benefited from them as well.

Her hair curled over her neck, close to her mouth. He could push it out of the way if he reached over. Instead he stood and looked down at her.

"That's me," she said wryly. "Even though I'm a nervous wreck about all this stuff that's going on, I still think we'll come out all right. Don't worry, I've got enough hope for the both of us."

"Don't do anything _too_ foolish. It would be a shame if I did not get paid."

"I'll try. Is this good night?"

He jumped at the opportunity. "I must take my leave. You understand your role?"

She sighed, theatrical in her cups. "Tony will send me the flash drive, I'll plug it in, I'll give it back. He'll tell me if there's a problem. We'll go from there."

"He'll tell us," Loki corrected.

"Right."

His tongue felt like lead. "Then I will . . ."

"Right. Right! You're leaving. Probably because you don't want to watch drunk Jane all night. I don't blame you." She ushered him out, pausing only as she was closing the door. "Loki?"

He looked back over his shoulder.

"Drive safe and . . . all that." She leaned her head against the jamb. She frowned as if she wanted to say something else, then shook her head.

He only gave a short nod before turning away.

 

The next Monday morning, Jane woke before her alarm went off. A quick glance told her that it was only 6:13, and outside the sky was only a dim shade of charcoal. She thought about going back to sleep until she remembered what she had to do that day. Her head fell back on the pillow and she gave a weak groan. Briefly she considered closing her eyes to everything, but she knew she was too preoccupied to be able to fall asleep again. 

Instead, she rolled over onto her side and ran through the plan in her head.

First, she had to successfully sneak in the flash drive that had appeared in her mailbox on Saturday, sneaking it past security. 

Then she would have to find a computer to plug it into. That didn't seem like a hard task at first glance – she had a custom-built computer that was hooked into the A.I.M. network in her own lab to crunch data and run simulations – but Stark had advised her to find someone else's computer to cover her tracks. The program, as he'd described it, was simply going to run a diagnostic on the network and servers and download copies of everything from Evan's email account in case there was more incriminating information.

Then all she'd have to do was remove the drive and smuggle it out of the building as discreetly as she'd smuggled it in.

Simple. Straightforward. Nerve-wracking. 

Once she was parked three hours later, Jane watched the front door for a moment. Everything looked normal. Of course everything looked normal, she told herself. She thought about the drive taped to the inside of her thigh and bit her cheek. She'd gone with a pull-on skirt instead of pants, for extra security, but was already wondering whether that really mattered.

Jane kept her chin up during the walk – just barely – and eyed the guard at the front desk on her way up. As she opened the door, he nodded at her politely; he had been there every day since she'd started work, nearly. ″Good morning, Nico,″ she said, as brightly as possible, and clutched her purse in both hands.

He gave her a lazy salute. ″Morning, Dr. Foster.″

Of course he would recognize her, her brain told her. He wasn't going to randomly initiate a strip-search on an employee he'd known for years.

She'd worn one of those stretchy skirts instead of one with a zipper, thinking about Tony's comment about the total metal involved in moving through the detector all at once. The more she could minimize, the better.

The hall seemed obscenely silent as she approached the detector, her shoes clacking loudly at each step.

Jane tried not to hesitate as the stepped through the detector. _Just like you have for every weekday morning for the past three years,/i > she told herself firmly. _Today is not any different.__

_The machine beeped, loudly and intrusively, as she went through._

_Nico straightened up in his chair as he woke up to what had happened. ″Dr. Foster?″_

_″Nico?″_

_He rose in a stately fashion, every extended second adding to Jane's fear. She couldn’t let her eyes drop from his gaze, but she thought that she could hear her heart pounding under her skin, her hasty breathing._

_He waddled over to where she was standing, frozen._

_″Your purse, Dr. Foster?″ He gestured with his hands._

_″Oh, of course.″ Jane handed it over, looking at the purse and then up to his face, which seemed blank, unreadable._

_He dug through her small purse. Finally he emerged with her keys in hand. ″Ah-ha! I thought you might have forgotten to put them in the basket."_

_″The basket.″ Jane went weak with relief. She had forgotten to put her keys in the basket outside the metal detector. Because those would make it go off. Every day, or nearly, she'd put her keys in there, and today of all days – she had just forgotten. ″Sorry about that,″ she said, hoping her voice wasn't as shaky as she felt._

_″No problem, Dr. Foster,″ he said with a smile. ″Don't worry about it.″_

_Jane watched as he replaced the keys in her purse and handed it back to her. For a moment, she wasn't sure what she should do: Stop? Keep going? Pulling the purse over her shoulder, she asked, ″You don't need me to, um –" and cursed herself for giving him the opening._

_But Nico just waved her way. ″No problem, Dr. Foster.″_

_She smiled at him gratefully. "Thanks, Nico.″_

_And she walked forward into the hallway. Even as part of her was waiting of the other shoe to drop, for someone to walk up to her and say, ″Dr. Foster, there's been a mistake," she was lit with the glow of triumph. She'd made it through._

_For the rest of the morning she looked over the data from the latest astronomical reading. It was hard to pay attention, which had rarely ever been a problem for her. There was a history of readings that were ambiguous in their origins and arrivals; they did not look exactly like the readings she had gotten when the Einstein-Rosen bridge had opened between Asgard and Earth – Thor had called it the _Bifrost_ \- but they had some similar characteristics. They were a puzzle to her team: clearly irregular, not the norm by any means, but not fitting into any astronomical framework they had built up so far. Which meant that either they'd gotten quite a bit wrong about the Einstein-Rosen bridges they did know about and some of the prior data just happened to fit the wrong theory, or the theory itself was wrong and would have to be rebuilt from scratch._

_Not for the first time since he'd left, Jane wished Thor was there so she could ask him questions. But chasing the tail of that thought was the rueful follow-up thought that she probably wouldn't get much out of him anyway. He seemed predisposed to metaphor, taking poetic license with physical laws and cosmological configurations without considering Jane's needs as a scientist._

_The end of her marker tapped against the whiteboard erratically. _There's always Loki_ , she thought suddenly. She had a feeling he would be better inclined to translate, or to realize there was a difference between their respective ways of seeing the world at least, though of course he wasn't a trained physicist. In fact, he seemed to have a special disdain for ″science″ as such. But he still might have some insight on how to convert one theoretical language to another. Maybe she could ask Loki the next time she saw him._

_Unfortunately, that reminded her of the flash drive taped to her leg. Almost of its own accord, it seemed to begin itching beneath the tape. There were computers in her lab, but she couldn't think of a good excuse to use one of the other lab members' and as much as Stark had said they would know who it wasn't, Jane wasn't so sure. She wasn't going to get anyone on her lab team in trouble based on her suspicions._

_Which just left using a computer in someone _else's_ lab. Like there was a good excuse to do that._

_Well, she'd been in Evan's lab, hadn't she? A week ago, admittedly, but still . . . maybe it was plausible that she'd left something, or . . ._

_Jane felt the onslaught of inevitability. It would have to be Evan's lab, wouldn't it, it was him who had turned her on to the possible problems, and he was the most convenient possible scapegoat if something went wrong or he himself discovered what she was up to._

_″I'll be back in a little while,″ Jane said abruptly. Her two lab assistants, Adelaide and Abram, looked up from where they had been arguing, in quiet voices, about the theory behind matter traversing the Einstein-Rosen bridge._

_″Uh,″ Abram said. ″Sure thing.″ They both looked down at their work without waiting for Jane's reply._

_After a brief sojourn to the bathroom, where she removed the flash drive from its hiding place and threw away the tape, Jane made her way slowly but surely to Evan's lab – or rather, series of labs. He was a physicist too, although of the experimental variety, and headed up a section of the company's Applications division. He'd always been friendly to her, Jane's mind reminded her traitorously._

_But then she reminded herself of the designs she'd stumbled upon. "Hey, Evan," she said, popping her head in the door with a smile._

_"Jane," he said, inclining his head. "What's up?"_

_"You remember how I borrowed your lab the other weekend to run some tests?"_

_"Yeah, yeah." He had leaned back in his chair and was looking at her through narrowed eyes._

_"I was hoping I could use your computer again," she said, trying for another smile. It couldn't hurt._

_Frowning, he looked back at his computer. "What do you need from here?"_

_"I used some of the wrong settings for the simulation." Jane tried to inject her tone with an apology. The flash drive's edges pressed painfully against her palm as her grip tightened. "I just need to re-run the analytical program with the right ones. Yours is the only one around strong enough to process it fast enough that it won't cut into my lunch break." That was true enough. In her other hand she held up the other drive, one of the company-issued varieties with the logo. "I have everything right here."_

_"You couldn't get a grunt to do it?" He backed away from the computer station. "I guess I'll find something else to do."_

_Jane found a chair and got herself situated, trying to make her movements deliberately slow and steady. She kept Loki's words from their first meeting in mind: as if nothing were wrong. Evan did not, unfortunately, go somewhere else. But luckily the monitor was equipped with USB ports on both the side and back of the monitor; without daring to look over her shoulder, she carefully plugged in the official drive, and slipped the secret one into the back. Supposedly the program was designed to run discreetly in the background; she could only hope Tony Stark was as good as his word._

_She executed the original program and sat back to wait. The official simulation wouldn't take more than twenty minutes, and Tony had not been very specific about the window of time needed for his worm to crawl through the company's servers. Apparently, it was artificially intelligent and would decide what to copy as it went._

_Twenty minutes was a long time to sit in awkward silence with the man she thought might be betraying the company – worse, _not_ betraying it at all, but doing exactly what they wanted – or possibly committing treason. Or was possibly innocent of all her suspicions in some way she hadn't figured out yet. A quick glance told her that Evan was keeping himself busy by looking through some notes. Jane tried not to look too guilty as she waited._

_Eventually one of his colleagues came by, and they spoke together in the corner in low voices. Something about energy transfer states and stable materials. Every once in a while, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw one or the other glancing at her, then looking away._

_Even though she was on edge waiting for the programs to finish executing, she must have been lured into a lull somehow. The dialogue box that popped up to inform her the simulation had finished running took her by surprise; she jerked up in her seat as it flashed across the screen. Both of the men looked over at her._

_Jane smiled weakly, her heart yammering. Tony Stark's program hadn't given her a sign it was finished yet. "Not getting enough sleep, I guess." The man she didn't know gave a grunt. It might have been annoyed, or doubtful; with her nerves so frayed, it was hard to tell._

_Finally, a small, discreet window popped up to inform her of the program's completion. She only saw it for a second before it disappeared. Jane breathed a silent, heartfelt sigh of relief._

_"Thanks for letting me use your machine, Evan," she said, probably too brightly and definitely too loudly. Pulling out the official flash drive, she rose to her feet and used her body to shield the corner of the monitor from their view while pulling out the second drive and closing her hand around both._

_The other man frowned at her. "Wait, what's that?"_

_Jane froze. _Think,_ she told herself. _What would Loki do?_ She affected her best impression of innocence, and tried to nudge what she thought was the right flash drive into place. "Hmm? What's that?"_

_"What did you just grab there?" he said. Yup, that was definitely suspicion, and now Evan was looking harder at her too. Jane's heart skipped a beat. She could only hope that she'd done the trick correctly, otherwise she might be screwed._

_She opened her hand, showing them her palm, which contained only one flash drive – the one with the company logo. Widening her eyes, she said, "It's my flash drive. I came by to run a simulation again . . . did Evan not mention it?"_

_He waved her away, apparently irritated, and Jane took the opportunity to scurry out of there as fast as she could, ducking into the bathroom the first chance she could so that she could sit in a stall. She had to get herself under control._

_The flash drives imprinted themselves on her palm. She couldn't believe she had pulled it off. It was a magic trick; she'd pushed Tony's drive through two of her fingers so that it was held in place by just the tip, so that it wasn't visible from the front of her hand._

_It had been Loki who had taught her that bit of sleight-of-hand, on one of his better, more charming days. They'd had a couple of beers and he had gone over it with her and made her practice it again and again. _You never know,_ he'd intoned, mock-gravely, _when a simple trick might save your life._ At the time she'd laughed at the idea, and he'd looked hurt. Now she was very glad he had._

_Later, Jane sealed the flash drive into a padded envelope and wrote down the address Stark had texted her—she decided not to think about how he'd gotten her very much unlisted number, unlisted thanks to paparazzi who were very curious about her relationship with Thor—and slapped an overnight label on it._

_Over the next few days she thought about calling Loki, but without word from Stark there wasn't any good reason to. Loki wasn't the type to appreciate chitchat or her anxious word-vomit about the possibility of the world ending. In fact, he'd probably roll his eyes, sigh, and hang up on her. She almost called him despite that._

_It wasn't until Thursday after work that Stark called back. She knew it was him because he'd uploaded a picture of himself to her contacts—seriously, how did he _do_ that, he'd never even touched her phone—so that, staring up from her phone's screen, was Tony's face in sunglasses, while he flashed a peace sign. It looked like a selfie. Ugh._

_Still, she answered the call eagerly. "Tony?"_

_"Hey, Foster. We need to talk."_

_Jane's hand tightened around the phone. "What did you find out?" She heard the sound of wind through the phone's speaker. "Are you outside or something?"_

_"Or something. I'm on my way over, bee tee dub."_

_"Is this, um, not a secure line?"_

_Even over the wind she heard his snort, and she relaxed, but only a smidge. "Don't insult my tech, Foster. I just have something to show you." A pause. "Really, you should thank me for not following up on that."_

_"I'll try to be grateful. What about Loki?"_

_"We should seriously consider cutting out the middleman," Stark said breezily. Jane almost protested, but he continued. "Don't get your panties in a twist, I called tall, dark, and broody. He's on his way too. In fact, if I timed it correctly—which I did, of course—he'll be at your front door in ETA two minutes."_

_Jane's heart picked up pace. She rubbed her hand against her jeans and stood up, careful to step around the papers strewn across the floor. "It's that bad?"_

_"Your apartment complex has balconies, right?"_

_" _What?_ " Jane demanded, but the call was cut off. As she was trying to call him back, she heard a crash outside the sliding glass door. She stared._

_Iron Man was on her balcony. More specifically, Iron Man was trying to piece together one of her flowerpots, which he'd apparently broken in the landing, before he gave up. Jane could hear the hum of the suit's power even through the closed door. She opened it._

_"It wasn't my fault," said Tony immediately, his voice modulated by the suit. "I'm great at landings. It's your balcony's fault." He patted the railing in a series of clangs. "You should get that checked out. Actually, tell you what, I'll build you a better one."_

_"Right," said Jane, still holding her phone. Then her brain caught up with what was happening. "This is your idea of discreet?" she hissed. "Iron Man landing on my _balcony_?"_

_The faceplate flipped up. From inside Tony grinned at her. "So invite me in."_

_Jane waved him in and shut the door after him as quickly as possible. The suit began to retract from his body, pulling itself into what looked like a suitcase. An Iron Man suitcase. Was that how he transported it everywhere? He was wearing a tee-shirt and jeans—Tony Stark was in her apartment wearing jeans, said a small awed voice in her head—a little worse for the wear for being inside the suit, but it made very visible the arc reactor in his chest, which was glowing._

_He waved a hand in front of her face. "Foster? You in there?"_

_She shook her head to clear it. "Sorry."_

_"That's all right, happens to a lot of people," he said generously. "It's a natural reaction."_

_A spark of irritation lit up in Jane. "Oh, no. I was just thinking—you're shorter in real life."_

_Tony's mouth pinched in a frown, but before he could respond the doorbell rang._

_"That'll be our least favorite Norse demigod."_

_"How many do you even know?"_

_"Three, technically, if you count Sif that one time we hung out on the fields of glorious battle together and she never spoke a word to me. So, clearly way better than Loki."_

_Tony was right; it was Loki at the door. He'd pulled his hair back in some kind of knot and, as usual, was in a suit. Even when he'd first crash-landed into her life, Loki had insisted on dressing a certain way. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen him in even a single tee-shirt._

_Loki gestured toward her with a hint of impatience. "May I—? Stark is on his way—"_

_Jane stepped aside, revealing to him that Tony was already there._

_"You lost, pal," were Tony's first words. "Come on! Were you even trying to win?"_

_"Win? Wait. Were you two . . . racing to my apartment?"_

_When he spoke, Loki's voice was dripping with aristocratic disdain. "I assure you I was engaged in no such pedestrian activity."_

_" _Please._ You're just saying that because I won. Which I did. I've been here, like, forever. Waiting on you. We've been having a lot of fun without you." He leered._

_"Well, _Loki_ knocked on the door like a real human being. _You_ crushed my flax lily. He wins."_

_"He wasn't even racing, he said so himself! How could he win? Riddle me that, Foster." Tony helped himself to the can of wasabi almonds on her counter. "And I'm not even touching the human being thing."_

_Jane had the feeling she had stepped into some huge story she didn't know anything about. Maybe it had something to do with San Francisco. She swung into the living room to gather all the relevant folders. "If you guys are done with your . . . whatever," she called out, "maybe you could tell me what exactly is going on?"_

_"Mission. Assignment. Yeah." Tony fiddled with one of the gold bracelets on his wrists as she returned. "So, uh, bad news on that front, guys."_

_Jane could practically feel the good humor drain from the room all at once. "What do you mean?" she asked. Suddenly she wasn't so sure she wanted to know what he found after all._

_"To put it bluntly? Things are a lot more fucked up than we thought."_


	4. Chapter 4

“Fucked up.” There were certain quirks of Midgardian language that Loki was fond of, but he did not always appreciate their lack of specificity. “In what way, exactly?”

They were now gathered around Jane’s counter in an uneasy circle. Stark pulled something small out of his pocket and tossed it onto the tabletop with apparent nonchalance.

For a moment, nothing happened. Jane was eyeing the object, whatever it was – just a black device the size of his thumb tip – with skepticism. Stark frowned, and then jogged the corner of the device against the countertop once or twice. Immediately a bright blue light began to emanate from it and take shape. This was evidently its purpose, for Stark looked pleased with himself, though of course that was not unusual.

“Nice, right? Of course, the portable version is still in beta. A kink or two to work out.”

“Of course."

“Really, it’s in beta. Alpha, maybe. Okay, I threw it together this morning.”

Loki’s eyes, however, strayed to Jane. She was leaning into the display so that her chin and the end of her nose were lit up with blue. Without saying anything, she began to manipulate the display with her hands, rotating it, turning it, zooming in and out of its quadrants. There was information here, Loki saw, models of – he did not know what, but suspected he soon would. 

“Is this S.H.I.E.L.D.’s? I think I’ve seen this before,” muttered Jane, engrossed. Stark frowned hugely at her.

“Mine’s in 3-D,” protested Stark.

Jane turned her big brown eyes on Stark at last. “So what about my case?”

Stark snapped into a more businesslike demeanor. “So my worm crawled all over their system. I found the designs you were looking for, along with some notes. Bad news: They’re definitely weaponizing your research, and they’re close to building your bridge machine.”

Jane looked stricken. Stark opened a section of the hologram to spit out something that looked familiar to Loki: a large, boxy Midgardian device he recognized from Jane’s notes. Jane recognized it as well, judging by her gasp.

“It’s not just a schematic, either,” said Stark. “They’re almost done building it. They're just waiting on you.”

Loki’s mind, however, was turning in a different direction. “You said,” he said slowly, “that it was worse than we thought.”

“Right.” Stark pointed at him, then zoomed out of that display and opened another folder. “I did a little snooping myself, once I was inside. That's not the only thing they've been up to. Biological engineering programs trying to replicate Cap's supersoldier juice. Course, who's not doing that." Tony turned to Loki suddenly. "Some stuff _you_ might recognize." There was a hint of accusation in his tone.

Loki deigned to merely raise an eyebrow. Stark gestured at the display. As a matter of fact, Loki thought as he leaned forward to examine, there was something vaguely familiar here. On the display there were a number of objects rotating, awaiting inspection. And the fact that they were blue seemed to awaken some recognition in him.

Affecting disinterest, Loki selected one of the objects at random to see in better detail. Immediately he realized where he had seen it before and felt slightly ill. It was a two-headed axe, meant for use in battle. That itself was not particularly noteworthy; Loki had seen many such weapons in his lifetime. No, it was the materials the axe was composed of that gave him pause.

"Anything ringing a bell, there?" Stark's hand interrupted his line of sight. "Anyone there? Bueller?"

Loki recollected himself, fixed Stark with a look, and flicked the display so that the axe became small and unremarkable once more. "I see," he said reluctantly, ignoring Jane's curious expression.

"Haven't seen one of those since the Battle of San Francisco."

Jane leaned against the counter, gripping it so that her knuckles had turned pale, and she looked anxiously between them. "Haven't seen one of what since . . .?"

"Looks like the fine craftsmanship of the frost giants to me," Stark said in a clipped voice.

Loki gave a short nod.

Jane frowned at the display, thumbing through the objects herself. "They look like regular weapons to me," she said doubtfully. "Old-fashioned ones, obviously, but what's so special about them?"

Stark turned to him to answer with a dismissive gesture. "They are made of ice," said Loki. "Not just any ice, mind you. In the far north of their desolate, sunless world, they mine what they call _true ice_ to form into weapons. It is harder than any of your diamonds. This ice has never been water; it will not melt, not unless you send it into the heart of a star. More importantly, it serves as a powerful conduit for their magic and allows them to perform spells that they would never be able to perform otherwise."

Stark looked at him over the top of the display. "That's a lot more info than I was able to pull off their databases."

Loki spread his hands on the table, palms flat, and pressed lightly. "No doubt. The giants are the only creatures known who can handle the ice for long periods of time, and I doubt very much that human researchers have been able to get very far in their studies."

Jane was worrying her lip between her teeth, her eyes on the display. "That's not so bad, then, right?"

"Unless messing around with that stuff somehow calls down Loki's furry blue friends on us again."

Loki cast him a sharp glance. "They do not have a means of transport."

"Where did they get these, do you think?"

"My guess? S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't quite get all of 'em after their little visit to us."

"Don't they have the right to? Are you saying _you_ wouldn't have done the same thing?"

"The question isn't _would_ I have done the same, sweetcheeks, but _have_ I done the same, and the answer is no. To both, in fact."

The conversation degenerated from there. Jane predictably took he part of her employer; for a species of such short lives that chased change, so lured by the novel, they could be unexpectedly resistant to it. For his part Stark opposed the business that competed with his. Loki knew this discussion was going nowhere; this was no business for Stark's little crew in suits, not without evidence of actual wrongdoing.

Eventually Jane's anger faded into an almost palpable uncertainty. Before Stark could inveigle her into some action that would endanger her, Loki spoke up. His tone was deceptively calm.

"Perhaps, before taking any direct action, we should break to consider our options?"

"Sitting around doing nothing? While A.I.M. is engineering weapons of mass destruction?" Stark waved a hand at him, clearly put off. "Forget about it, what was I thinking, you're not Thor, you're not the guy to take action."

Even Jane looked alarmed at that jibe. Inhaling deeply through his nose, Loki valiantly repressed the urge to retaliate. "In your search, did you find any particular evidence of actual wrongdoing? Plans of attack, perhaps? Connections to shadier organizations? Records of sales to other nations? Imminent danger to a single soul of any kind?"

Stark ground his teeth visibly. "Depending on you definition of 'evidence' . . . not _strictly_ -"

"Then we may take a day or more to . . . sleep on it." Loki spread his hands magnanimously, speaking in the eminently reasonable tones he knew Stark would find infuriating. "You may even use this time to pursue such actionable evidence, if you wish. Or perhaps think through the courses of action available to us." A sidelong glance revealed Jane biting down the corner of a smile; he caught her gaze and raised an eyebrow briefly at her amusement. She pretended to glare at him through her evident relief.

Piqued by their silent exchange, Tony turned his attention back to Jane, smiling brilliantly with no trace of his earlier ire. "Dinner? I have a permanent table at [Restaurant]. Could be there in less than five minutes. Stark Express. I've been told I'm excellent company."

Flustered, Jane held up her hands. "Thank you for offering. But no thanks. Not tonight."

Stark shrugged one shoulder and swiped up his little device. "Your loss. Have fun, kids. Try not to let cape-and-horns here get you too down."

Jane ushered Stark toward the front door, even though he clearly wanted to exit back through the balcony. When she closed the door behind him, she leaned against it for a moment, closing her eyes. "He's so . . ."

"Obnoxious?" supplied Loki. "Insufferable? Pestiferous?"

"Exhausting."

He waited a moment, watching her as she circled the kitchen island, trailing her fingers against the wood.

"You held up your end of the bargain," said Jane finally in a subdued voice.

He took that as his cue to leave. "I believe I did."

"I can't – think about all this right now. Are you going to stay?"

It was a blunt question and it caught Loki off-guard. "Do you want me to?" he asked neutrally.

She hesitated, her expression anxious and her eyes flickering around the room. "Will you? It'll be just like old times." She offered him a weak smile that faded almost as soon as it appeared. "It's just – I didn't think I was going to uncover an international conspiracy. I keep thinking the men in black are going to break down the front door any minute now."

He had repaid her for her hospitality; he had done everything she asked him to do. He could walk away with a free conscience, at least in this matter. He did not need her bridge; he had no intention of returning to Asgard. He might never see her again. All these things were true. But something held him back. He was poised on the knife's edge of indecision. Weak-minded.

"Do you know what you'll do?" he asked instead of answering.

Jane shrugged and avoided his eyes. "Are you staying?" she repeated.

What could one night hurt? He debated within himself. Tomorrow would be the same as today, he told himself. It didn't matter either way. "If you like."

Jane gave an ill-disguised sigh of relief. "Order some Chinese, would you? I'm going to take a shower. There are menus in the drawer."

He waved her away, glad to hear her breakdown would be occurring elsewhere, and sat at the table in front of Jane's notepad, which she had left open. She'd taken notes during their talk, more than once breaking the lead of the pencil. They were, as he remembered, quite disorganized, even wild. Her mind seemed to spin in directions alien to others – she would write down a word that would seem to be totally disconnected to the subject at hand, inexplicable until she deigned to translate her strange thoughts. 

Stark's surveillance had not revealed the locations of any secret, menacing bases or headquarters, nor where the alien weapons (it was easier to think of them that way; they were as alien to him as to her, he told himself) were stored. But the man had admitted himself that his surveillance was incomplete. If someone went in knowing what they were looking for, they might obtain much more useful information.

He almost didn't hear Jane come up behind him, until she touched him on the shoulder.

She did not remove her hand, instead leaning over his shoulder to look at the papers before him. "What are you looking at?" Her lip trembled slightly before she stilled it between her teeth. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed, but otherwise she looked composed. He fancied he could see a few droplets in her eyelashes before she rubbed them away with the edge of her towel and began drying her hair with perhaps a little more force than necessary.

Loki looked back toward the table with a gesture. "It is a dangerous situation you have gotten yourself into here, Jane Foster."

Huffing, she leaned forward so that her wet hair fell in a tangled curtain around her face, quite close to him. Reaching forward almost instinctively, he pushed her heavy hair over one shoulder. Her towel-rubbing ceased and she looked at him with confusion.

At her look, he was struck with embarrassment by the strangeness of the gesture. To cover it up, he calmly wiped his damp knuckles on her towel and conjured an explanation: "You were dripping on me."

Instantly Jane's face lost its bewilderment, and she punched him in the ribs with her free hand. "Jerk," she muttered, but one side of her mouth curled up in a smile. She flicked the wet ends of her hair at him.

He pointed at the notes with his chin, his gaze not leaving hers. "Now you know. Is your curiosity satisfied?" There was perhaps a pointed edge to his words.

Her smile faded into an unhappy line, but her words were as stubborn as ever. "You think I should have just ignored what was going on."

"It wasn't your business." His voice came out more sharply than he intended.

"It isn't my business that my employer is trying to develop _weapons of mass destruction_?" she repeated.

Loki gritted his teeth. He was tempted to respond that she hadn't known that at all when she made her decision – her foolish, rash decision to pursue the truth of this matter – but the fact that she had been right after all would not win him victory. Instead he merely said, "Think of it now. You could be enjoying yourself none the wiser, perhaps having some tea on the balcony and enjoying the cool night, your conscience clean. You would be out of danger entirely."

She yanked some papers out from underneath his hand, glaring furiously. "I would be in danger, I just wouldn't know it!"

"Your people have a saying, one that is not entirely nonsense: ignorance is bliss." His own ignorance about his nature certainly had been, and that sharpened his voice. "You would also likely not be having fits of weeping in the shower."

Jane was breathing heavily, staring at him. He realized she was close to tears again; he judged it to be at least as much despair as anger. Uncomfortable, he looked away.

They ended up eating cheap Chinese delivery on the floor of her apartment, disregarding table manners entirely, and it brought back memories of the time he had lived with her. He had but rarely thought of them in the time they were apart, but now he found them returning at odd moments. They were not entirely bad memories, he allowed in a generous moment. There had been a delightful freedom in her lifestyle, after his initial anger and shock had faded: food at any possible hour, sometimes forgotten, sometimes feasted upon; a frenzy of questions and work and, when Darcy had had her way, _adventures in the boonies_ ; and perhaps moments of something like friendship. Occasional moments, interspersed between much longer periods of arguing and campaigns of aggressive, mutual silence. A memory surfaced unexpectedly: she had insisted on teaching he and Thor how to use chopsticks, once, correcting his form and laughing at his increasing frustration until he had stalked away.

Of course, it had all soured, like everything good in Loki's life, he reflected. Not the smallest part his own fault. Still, he owed Jane something for her hospitality. Even when he had not thought deeply of it for years, he had always been cognizant of it at the back of his mind. Particularly since their parting. It had not been as simple as he'd imagined in his foolishness to build a life, even to survive, while bereft of all connections and the advantages that royalty had provided for him, reluctant as he was to admit them. Jane had come to collect on his debt, even if she had not known it when she had asked for his help, and he would repay it in full.

 

"Loki," she whispered, nudging his shoulder. "Hey, Loki." She felt a twinge of regret at waking him up – asleep, he didn't look quite so angry – but he would forgive her after he heard what she had to say.

He sighed deeply, and she knew he was awake. She was perched on the edge of the coffee table. When he saw her, he pulled himself up into a sitting position, mirroring her.

"There had better be a good reason for this." His normally smooth voice was much rougher and lower than usual.

"I thought you'd want to know," said Jane more quickly. "I did it!" At his uncomprehending look, she continued giddily, "The bridge! I solved the power supply problem!" She held up the papers in her lap, scrawled with newly completed equations, as proof. "I woke up at two and I couldn't go back to sleep, so I started working and it just _came_ to me – the solution – I mean, it's not really practical yet, we'll have to get someone who knows materials better – do you think Tony Stark would help? – but in theory it's all there! You can go home!"

In a fit of feeling she flung her arms around his shoulders and hugged him. She felt him startle and gave him an extra squeeze. His throat worked against her shoulder; he was swallowing.

Then he spoke. "Are you that eager to be rid of me?"

Bewildered, she pulled back. Even in the half-darkness, his eyes were pale and fathomless; she couldn't see below the surface. She had the feeling she might have told him anything just then.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "Don't you want to go home?"

His smile was conciliatory. "Why, of course. It was only a joke."

His gaze never wavered from hers, and she knew somehow that he was lying.

"No, you don't," she said as it dawned on her.

Loki's eyes narrowed slightly at her, his anger at being caught out palpable, but he didn't say anything.

"That doesn't make any sense!" she burst out, jumping up. "You bitch and moan _all the time_ about how _inferior_ mortals are, and how _awful_ and _backward_ Earth is – I know you can't want to stay here! Why don't you want to go back to Asgard?"

His words were low and quick, like a snake striking. "I don't expect you of all people to understand my situation, it's a little more complicated than what you are capable of –"

" _Don't_." She jabbed a finger at him. "Don't even – I am trying to _help_ you, and you are just – have you even _spoken_ to Thor?"

"Oh, I haven't had that great honor, I suppose only you merit such special treatment –" He was practically spitting.

Jane knew, like she knew the sun would rise and set, that Thor would never abandon his brother here all by himself. If they'd never spoken, it had to be because Loki didn't want to. She felt like stomping her foot like a child. Tears of frustration came to her eyes.

"You're such a liar. He would never do that. I don't understand! You have a home! _Why_ don't you want to go home? To Thor and your parents and your _family_ , at least you still have one –"

Suddenly he shot to his feet, looming over her at an intimidating height. "They are _not_ my family! They never were!"

Her phone rang.

Its tinny interruption made her aware that they were both breathing harshly. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She swiped the phone off the counter; Tony's face was on the screen. "What is he doing? It's four in the morning!" she snapped before stabbing the green phone.

"Foster?" He sounded harried.

"What, Tony?"

"Just FYI, did you know A.I.M. has a couple agents headed over to your apartment right now?"

Jane tried to wrap her mind around what he was saying, but it wasn't sinking in. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Just got an alert from the bugs I left on their system. They're on their way. Are you there right now?"

"Yes, I'm here, I don't understand –"

Tony's voice was suddenly much sterner. "Get out of there, Foster, and take Rudolph if he's with you. You've been found out. _Go_."

Jane looked at Loki helplessly. "Where am I supposed to –"

"I'll text you the address." The line hung up. She stared at the now-dark screen for a moment before springing into action, grabbing her purse and keys.

"We need to go. Tony says A.I.M. is on their way. How did they find _out_?" she asked, momentarily derailed by the question.

Loki had already pulled on his jacket, covering his crumpled collar. His hair was a mess, too, though he was trying to run a hand through it to tame it. "Stark, likely."

"You can't think that he – he just warned me –"

His lip lifted in another sneer. "He's not as smart as he thinks he is."

She yanked the front door open and reached for her keys. Fumbling, she tried to lock the door, before Loki snatched the keys from her hands.

"It doesn't matter," he hissed.

They made it to the top of the stairwell. Voices echoed up. "202, right?" she heard someone say, and an affirmative grunt in response.

Jane stared at Loki, paralyzed. That was her apartment number. "We have to go another way."

"The balcony," he whispered immediately, and they started back.

She did lock the door behind them this time, and the deadbolt too. Maybe it would slow them down. As she passed the couch she saw the papers she'd shown Loki earlier. Her equations. A fully functional Einstein-Rosen bridge just waiting to be built.

She scooped them up on her way. She couldn't let them fall into the wrong hands.

Loki waved her through the balcony door impatiently before shutting it behind them. Before it closed, she heard a voice say something about the Seattle P.D.

"The police?" she whispered. Then she looked at Loki, and her heart sank. "It's not the cops, is it."

"I very much doubt it." Loki nodded curtly toward the railing. "Jump."

Behind them the front door of her apartment thumped ominously.

"What? I'm not even wearing shoes!" But she heard what she thought was the sound of her door breaking down. So she swung one leg over the rail and then the other, until she was hanging on. Then she made the mistake of looking down. 

"I'll follow. Go!"

It was only one floor down, Jane told herself. She threw herself off, trying to get all the way over the manicured bushes lining the ground floor of the building.

She didn't quite make it all the way. One of her arms landed in the shrubbery, and the leaves were _sharp_. She hissed as she pulled back, scraping herself. Tears stung her eyes as she looked up, waiting for Loki.

But he had not followed. He had _gone back inside_ , she realized with horror.

The balcony door was still open, and the muted sounds of a struggle wafted out. "Loki!" she whispered when she heard a succession of thumps. But of course there was nothing she could do from down here, and it wasn't like she could leave him. He still had her keys, too, anyway. At least she'd managed to hold on to her papers. She ran her fingers over the edges to reassure herself.

She watched as one of the attackers crowded Loki onto the balcony. There was a knife in one of his hands, which flashed in the moonlight.

It was over almost more quickly than she could follow. Loki kicked his feet out from under him, got one of his arms in a vicious lock, and slammed him up against the railing so that it bit into his windpipe. As he held him there and the man's struggling slowed, Jane looked around furtively. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be anyone up at this early hour. No one to hear the man's gasps as Loki held him there with his forearm until he slumped into unconsciousness.

Or, Jane wondered, was he dead?

She shivered as Loki pulled the man's limp body indoors, closed the door, and swung himself over the balcony ledge, apparently unaffected.

"One of them called for backup," he said shortly. "We must leave."

She felt slightly ill and like she might tip over any second. "I need my keys."

He began walking. She struggled to keep up with his long stride as it took them toward the parking lot.

"We're not taking your car. They know it. They might be tracking it."

It was chilly, and she was wearing barely anything: short-shorts and a tee-shirt, her usual sleepwear. Her teeth chattered as she climbed into passenger's-side seat and began pulling up the route to the address that had come up in her messages.

It was in Malibu, California. They were going to Tony Stark's house.

* * *

They didn't stop for gas until Leggett. Jane had nearly fallen asleep by the time they pulled in to the single gas station. She shifted to face Loki.

"You're bleeding," he accused.

She blinked and looked down. Distantly she had felt her knee throbbing, but it was actually scraped quite badly and bloodied. The wound wasn't deep, but it was big. She removed a piece of gravel from her knee with her fingernails, wincing, and saw what looked like claw marks running down her forearm. The bushes, she remembered. She hadn't even noticed.

Loki returned with bandages, disinfectant, and tweezers. When he gestured toward her, at first she didn't understand what he wanted. Then he reached over and grabbed her ankle.

"Oh," she said blankly. He lifted her foot so it was in his lap. With one hand he cupped her calf and with the other began to remove debris from the scrape. He worked in total silence.

Jane applied some antibiotic cream to the cuts on her arm and tried to ignore how weird this situation was.

"Any little thing might kill you," he muttered finally.

"I figured you'd like that," snapped Jane. She didn't know whether he was trying to be conciliatory or exasperating, and she was too tired and too on-edge to care. "But I guess you like having someone around to lecture too much, huh."

His hand spasmed on her leg. "Any little thing might kill _me._ "

Jane snorted. Of course he was only worried about himself.

"Are those guys dead?" she asked, suddenly wanting to know.

He was silent for a moment. "Would it bother you if they were?" There was a cruel note to his question, like he wanted her to say _yes_.

His tone struck a note of fear into her heart. " _Please_ tell me there aren't two dead bodies lying around in my apartment."

"Don't worry. A.I.M. will clean up after its own." He deposited the last piece of gravel in her palm – gross – and reached for the antibiotic.

"You enjoyed that," she muttered as she dumped the debris on the asphalt outside. He had a sadistic streak a mile wide, when the mood struck him.

"Suffice it to say my life has been very boring recently." There was a wrinkle of concentration on his brow as he smoothed the cream over her wound. 

"Where did you even learn to do this?"

"All warriors learn primitive field medicine, although of course even our most simple tools are superior to these. Hold that." He pressed her hand to the square of bandage while he cut off a length of tape.

"You couldn't just use magic?" she said dubiously.

"I never studied the healing arts."

"You didn't? Why not? That's really useful."

Was that the ghost of a smile? "It is. But I knew if I learned, I would be relegated to that station permanently."

She already knew he had a huge chip on his shoulder about being the odd one out. It was probably visible from space. "So what did you learn instead?"

"Fighting. Tactics. Illusions are very useful in battle." He sounded defensive about that last one, like he expected her to disagree. When she didn't, he added more quietly, "And how to subdue someone without killing them."

That was probably the only admission she was going to get that he hadn't killed the A.I.M. agents. Jane breathed a sigh of relief.

One of his palms slid further up her thigh. She glanced up at him, startled. "What –" she squeaked, suddenly aware that she was wearing very little and practically her whole leg was bare and he was only a few inches away from – he couldn't be –

In his other hand was her ankle. He gripped it firmly and began moving her knee through a full rotation. "Does it hurt especially?"

Nothing in his expression or tone told her that he'd noticed her reaction, though she couldn't be sure. She tried to push it away, but once she was thinking about it, it was hard to stop. His hand was distractingly warm and large. 

"Jane?"

Abruptly she remembered he was waiting for her response. "Nope. Nothing busted." Before she could get any more weird thoughts, she pulled her leg out of his grasp. It really had been awhile, huh. Hoping she wasn't blushing, she muttered, "Thanks," and tucked herself against the opposite side of the car.

She checked the route app on her phone and sighed. Six hundred miles was a long time to feel so awkward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, bad news: I signed up for the WIP Big Bang to finish this story in particular, but sadly I just don't have any interest in writing it anymore. That's what happens when you put off writing something for almost a year and never planned very well for it, I guess. So this story is officially abandoned to the wilds of the internet. Here is all of what I did manage to write. Hopefully I learned something from writing it, like: have an idea where you're going with a story.
> 
> Definitely check out the art created by the WIP Big Bang artist! (Linked below, I think?)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [art for 'The Constellations We Make' by Subjunctive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4251753) by [stormbrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbrite/pseuds/stormbrite)




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